opinion

Two Women, Same Fate

News reports about Nasrin Sotudeh and Batool Keyhani are in front of my eyes. Two distant beloved ones to whom I can relate. Nasrin is an attorney who is serving her 9 month jail sentence without having committed a crime. Her only offense is that the authorities of the Islamic regime in Iran do not like her professional client. And we know that when Iranian officials do not like somebody, they deny the person the right to defend himself or herself. In this environment if an attorney has the courage to take up the case of a defendant and attempt to defend his rights, the attorney is accused of acting against the country’s national security. This is how Nasrin has come to be labeled a dangerous criminal who if sent anywhere without handcuffs and police escorts is looked upon as a person who would shake the foundations of a regime that regularly criticized the leadership of the world and proclaims to correct the management of the globe and its people.

But regime handlers were not satisfied even with these senseless acts and wanted to revoke Nasrin’s bar licence. Iran’s oldest civil institution, the bar association, intervened and apparently succeeded in convincing these men that they could do this because of professional regulations that required that such be brought before the appropriate and qualified authority, which is none other than the administrative court of the judiciary. To everybody’s surprise, the handlers accepted this argument and through this act acquired some respect and credibility. But after that, events unfortunately took a different turn as these men began to roll back everything that has been achieved till now. Can one understand why, though? These men do not understand and trust notions of respect and dignity in the institution of the judiciary and injustice. Therefore, they take a measure that whisks away their own dignity and respect, which they must have attained through hard work and much machinations with ignorant people who have influence over the judiciary. How so? By handcuffing the hands of a fragile woman who supports legal action as the only defense for a person, including her own. Sotudeh is not a human rights criminal. She is also not affiliated to corrupt gangsters inside the Iranian regime each of whom carries multiple passports with different names. Yet they handcuff her, probably because they want to erase their own disrepute and failures that by now sit in their own professional dossiers. So we really face a regime that lacks any real judiciary or sense of justice and law, and which is even at war with itself and its own standards of justice and respect. This is when ignorance and absurdity become the standard for pursuing rights and the defense of a defenseless people. They cannot break away from their own ignorant system and standards. The only feat that putting handcuffs on Nasrin Sotudeh’s hands has achieved is that by showing this scene on national television, they have lifted the veil that has been hiding the disrepute of the country’s judiciary which operates through the use of shackles and chains, disdains laws, and is at war even with its own rules and regulations, let alone universal standards of human rights. This regime does not differentiate between good and bad. It gives refuge to dangerous hard core criminals while handcuffing pioneers of peace and negotiations. And through this, the regime in fact ridicules the very laws it has passed.

But aside this, let’s not forget that efforts do not go wasted. Iranian women have paid the price in showing the world that there is a rebirth in the institution of the judiciary in this country. Iranian women have persevered and have strived to show to the world, whenever they could, that Iran is a country with a long and powerful history of struggle. In the last 32 years, they have thrown their energy all the way up to the edge of threats of death to defend the rights of defendants and the independence of the judiciary. These two women who have gained prominence in this historic case are linked to the series of old and modern Iranian women attorneys. We respect and admire both of them. The defendant is Nasrin and Batool the judge overseeing the motion to annul her bar licence, who also happens to be a presiding member of Iran’s bar association, both have had the same experience vis-à-vis those who advocate and promote disregard for the law. Perhaps this is the first time that we actually see a defendant and a judge face the same destiny. Some are not aware what Batool has bravely and under the most difficult conditions, and in the absence of the Internet, campaigns, awards and international human rights attention, accomplished for the independence of this country’s judiciary. But we who have watched her and seen her dedication and painstaking efforts will not let go. This is a warning that women’s rights activists should not be oblivious to the 32 year history in which brave activists fought cases by case, like building blocks that were put on hostile grounds, to protect this institution, and should not let disappear. If the memory of these events is allowed to be short-lived and is destroyed through the efforts of monopolistic groups that are against human rights, this will become the curse for the country.

This is a beautiful and historic sight in the history of defense rights in revolutionary Iran that two women defendant attorneys, one young and full of zeal and the other experience and strengthened through the events of post 1979 revolutionary Iran are now facing each other in a judicial forum. No matter what the outcome of this case is, this event must be recognized as the most important development for the bar association, court attorneys and the role and importance that women attorneys play in strengthening this institution, no matter how conservative it may appear. Many do not know what bitter years Batool Keyhani went through during the first years of the 1979 revolution when the bar association was turned into a weak government bureau and its directors were put behind bars, and when there were no ears to hear the pain of defendants and victims, and what’s more, there were no brave and sharp critical tongues, other than Batool’s mother who was called “Dear”, to defend Batool who was behind bars. Every person then was watching out only for himself. So Batool was left to single handedly defend herself and her profession as a woman, and without any international support either. But she remained so patient and calm that she succeeded in her efforts to protect the rights of court attorneys and their professional rights as envisioned by the bar association.

We salute both of these women who have sowed the seeds of justice in this burnt ground. The handcuffs that Nasrin displayed on her cuffs are an insult to defense attorneys of any kind and breed. We must act and turn this insult into a protest by all attorneys and bar associations across the world. Otherwise, the right to defend will be weakened more than ever before to eventually die completely.